County authorizes advertisement of updated planning and building fee schedules for April 7 public hearing

The King George County Board authorized community development to advertise proposed updates to planning, zoning, GIS, environmental and building permit fees for a public hearing on April 7.

Kelly Luk, director of community development, said the fee schedule had not been updated since 2021 and described整理 several administrative additions and modest fee increases to reflect current review costs and newly used application types. Building Official Rick Herren explained the benchmarking process against neighboring communities and presented proposed increases sized to cover staff plan review and inspection workload while remaining competitive to avoid encouraging unpermitted work. For commercial solar, the department proposed changing from a per‑megawatt rate to a 1%‑of‑project‑cost permit fee.

Board members asked clarifying questions about plan re‑review fees, detached structure review and how the proposed changes might affect small contractors. Ms. Luk and Mr. Herren said the proposals aim to capture plan‑review time better and to make fees consistent across application types; they emphasized the changes will be considered at the April 7 public hearing before adoption.

What this means: If the board adopts the schedule after the public hearing, some residential and trade permit minimums will increase modestly, and commercial solar permit fees would rise under the proposed 1% rule. The public hearing is scheduled to coincide with CIP hearings on April 7.